Wednesday, August 13, 2008

In Susan’s not-a-blog she writes about John Cornyn’s curious altercation with time and temporal things. And she points to this Chron blog by Alan Bernstein who similarly reflects on Cornyn’s evaluation of what matters most in regard to time.

Both point out that Cornyn is going through some low-powered mental gymnastics in his conclusion that what is more important is the present time, because only in the present can we affect the future. And that, to Senator Cornyn, is highest in the pecking order that is time.

The future.

But not the past. The past is unimportant because, well, whatever happened then, that’s in the past.

Now while you shake your head to make sure you read that correctly – if you are shaking your head, don’t worry, you did – let me point out what the senator was driving at, because in one of the eleven possible dimensions, what Cornyn said makes perfect sense.

In a truly neoconservative Republican dimension, the 7th or 8th I think, the past is so unimportant that it need never be considered. Ever again. Because in the past, that’s where the mistakes are made. The mistakes that we learn by so that we don’t make them again.

The mistakes like the one Americans made when they listened to, and agreed with a Republican administration as it lied its way into an illegal and immoral war. Like the one that they made when they gave credence to a multimillion dollar snow job delivered by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Like the mistake made when the pharmaceutical and health insurance corporations convinced Americans that universal health insurance was creeping socialism.

And on and on and on.

So you see the point? The last thing we want to ever consider is the past, especially when evaluating which party should have the majority in the House and Senate, and which man should occupy the White House.

Because as any neoconservative Republican knows, when you focus on the past, that won’t bode well for their future.